Constructing activity awareness in CSCW

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Speaker
John M. Carroll
Information Sciences and Technology, Pennsylvania State University

When
-

Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)

Description

A contemporary approach to describing and theorizing about joint human endeavor is to posit “knowledge in common” as a basis for awareness and coordination. Recent analysis has identified weaknesses in this approach even as it is typically employed in relatively simple task contexts. We suggest that in realistically complex circumstances, people share activities and not merely concepts. We describe a framework for understanding joint endeavor in terms of four facets of activity awareness: common ground, communities of practice, social capital, and human development. We illustrate the sort of analysis we favor with a scenario from emergency management, and consider implications and future directions for system design and empirical methods.

Speaker's Bio

John M. Carroll is Edward Frymoyer Chair Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include methods and theory in human-computer interaction, particularly as applied to networking tools for collaborative learning and problem solving, and the design of interactive information systems. His book include Making Use (MIT Press, 2000), HCI in the New Millennium (Addison-Wesley, 2001), Usability Engineering (Morgan-Kaufmann, 2002, with M.B. Rosson) and HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks (Morgan-Kaufmann, 2003). He serves on several editorial boards for journals, handbooks, and series and is Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interactions. He received the Rigo Award and the CHI Lifetime Achievement Award from ACM, the Silver Core Award from IFIP, the Alfred N. Goldsmith Award from IEEE. He is a fellow of the ACM, IEEE, and HFES.

Speaker's Website
http://cscl.ist.psu.edu/public/users/jcarroll/Self/index.html

Host
Brad Myers